37th birthday and a rage against ChatGPT
Today, I am celebrating my 37th birthday. Unlike 16th or 21st birthday, 37th birthday does not seem to have any cultural significance, but 37th birthday is special on its own right! Aside the fact that 37 is a sexy prime number, entering 37th year of life, being alive for whole 36 years, means that I’ve spent equal of amount of time being a legal minor and an adult. From this point on, I will be an adult longer than I have been a minor! This special day deserves another blog post with some heavy reflections on life!
My adulthood started with many intense experiences. Even though it has been 18 years, my memories are still vivid, firmly imprinted in my brain. I left home, flew across the Pacific, and befriended a bunch of strangers in hopes to create a future of my own. I had been challenged intellectually, culturally, and spiritually. I do not think I can understate how intense those experiences were.
This summer, between my visit to Michigan, multiple reunions at weddings, and hosting many friends from overseas, I was able to revisit some key moments of my adulthood. I was itching to know what lost dreams and passions were worth reclaiming as I had been busy taking care of my growing family. It was timely to have a series of planned (and unexpected) rendezvouses with friends and mentors throughout the summer.
My wife and I planned a trip to our old stomping ground, Ann Arbor. Since we first met in Ann Arbor, we’ve gone through a year-long distance relationship, 5 years of marriage, COVID19 pandemic, new jobs at a new city, and two sons. We wanted to travel to where it all began to see how we want to evolve as a family.
My wife and I were incredibly thankful that we were welcomed back by so many. Many took days off, and some even flew in with their baby to see us. Having a little infant of our own, we knew how big of a sacrifice it was to see us. Obviously, the conversations we had did not resemble much of the past. After a few rounds of adulthood, we all had grown to enjoy talking about real estate, income tax, healthcare, sleep routines for babies, and how expensive daycare is. I have to say I enjoy talking about those things way more than I had hoped. We felt encouraged that our twenties in Michigan are literally and figuratively alive birthing new life experiences. Most importantly, we got to indoctrinate our little sons to Michigan football. Forever Go Blue.
I had meaningful meet-ups with my former mentors: my PhD advisor, former church leaders, and a college counselor from my high school! Reconnecting with them after becoming a father felt different as I understood better what it is like to care for someone else while taking care of my own family. I am thankful that I was shaped by many who were not only competent but also compassionate to take interest in my well-being.
Looking back, I had unmatched privilege to kick-start my adulthood with many great role models, setting a good trajectory for growth and maturing. However, there are still many crippling baggage from my childhood that I have dealt with for the entirety of my adulthood.
As far as I remember, anxiety has been my default emotion. Anxiety is a persistent backdrop in my mind, and it is always there. If nothing happens, I feel anxious. If something happens, I feel anxious . This anxiety often manifests into constant jitters, nail-biting, and racing thoughts that are very hard to quell.
If I have to guess why I have been conditioned this way, I suppose it has a lot to do with my family growing up. I don’t think we had any catastrophic dysfunction. However, I don’t think we know how to best handle emotions. As a child, I had a very difficult time deciphering family members’ emotional state. People seemed happy. All of sudden, they were not. Not knowing why someone could be upset always made me on edge. More critically, our family did not articulate what made us angry. All I could to do was to assuage ensuing anger by playing ‘nice.’ I learned to ignore, avoid, and deflect any negative feeling instead of communicating my needs. The combination of ‘not-knowing-when-things-are-going-to-blow-up’ and unresolved resentment was a potent recipe for anxiety.
I am sure there are way more contributing factors to my incessant anxiety, but it is becoming quiet clear that many of my anxiety is rooted in relational dysfunction. When I face relational issues, I tend to shut down, depriving any opportunities to address them, which inevitably amplify anxiety. This has been the single greatest source of grievance in our marriage, and I, unfortunately, invite many unnecessary conflicts to our marriage.
Speaking of relationship, I have a complex relationship with myself. It is embarrassing to admit so publicly, but I feel ashamed of myself often. The most pernicious anxiety I have is that I am wasting my precious life by not living up to my full potential. I am deeply ashamed of that. I could have achieved so much more if I had been more disciplined, more ambitious, and harder working. I wish I had a better personality. I wish I have maintained greater friendship. I wish I read more, studied more, lifted more, and so on. I suppose a healthy amount of self-doubt can be beneficial, but I frequently overdose on self-doubt.
I sense growing chips on my shoulder as I age. More time on Earth, more accomplishment I need to prove my worth. My rational self understands that most people are busy with their own lives, and I don’t have many, if not any, to impress. This anxiety primarily stems from me wanting to prove to myself that I am worth something. I find this intrinsic need utterly ridiculous. Why would anyone torture oneself with these unhealthy expectations? My parents have never been Asian tiger parents, and they have always supported me with kind words with a minimal set of low expectations such as ‘please don’t go to jail’ and ‘don’t be rude.’
The most damning part of doubting myself is that it sucks gratitude out of my life. It brews jealousy, contempt, and insecurities. Instead of being grateful for innumerably many things that God has provided, I am constantly worrying about what I do not have. It often makes me wanting to mask my weakness, and it happens a lot when I write!
I started to write because it helps me to override my racing thoughts, and I find the process of writing exceptionally calming. However, I get super obsessed with every typos, solecisms, redundant words, and low quality paragraphs that lack clarity. I’d spend many hours looking up writing tips, grammar rules, synonyms, antonyms, idioms, and metaphors to to mask my inability to write well.
When ChatGPT was released, I was overjoyed because I can use it to ‘improve’ my writing much faster. Paragraph by paragraph, I ask ChatGPT to iron out all the impurities in my writing, and I accept or reject its suggestions as I see fit.
One day, while prompting ChatGPT to finalize my blogpost, I had a desire to just publish my raw, unedited, unrefined, and unhinged blogpost full of low quality paragraph. My blogpost is a snapshot of my thoughts in the form of strings of symbols. Wouldn’t I actually want to preserve all of my imperfections for my future self, no matter how agonizing it is to see them? Wouldn’t I want intact access to my thoughts in the future? Can I be okay with who I am now?
Being an adult has many definitions, and I think learning to accept my flaws and learning to deal with them might be the single greatest feature of a mature adult. No matter how big of an issue I inherited from my childhood, I am wholly responsible, however tempting it is to blame everyone else, as I let it perpetuate for years as an adult.
So I am raging against ChatGPT today, exposing all my insecurities in forms of typos, grammatical errors, redundant phrases, overused vocabularies, boring cliches, and clumsy writings because that is who I am. I hope to rage against the machine as long as I could, so I may laugh at every issue I have now in the future in the same way as I laugh at social blunders I made as a child.
I conclude my 37th birthday with my heartfelt gratitude to those who stayed with me. Special thanks to my wife and my family for choosing to love me. I love you all.